FYRA ON THE BAD TRACK ! PROHIBITION TO RUN AND NEW INCIDENTS
UPDATE
25/01/2013 – Today, the FYRA’s are still not running and both dutch and belgian railways companies are searching alternatives to recreate a link between Brussels and Amsterdam. Some belgian newspapers say that the belgian railways use nowadays T18 machines to make tests, what the belgian railways strongly deny.
We also learned that the Fyra link between Antwerp and Breda, to start in some months will also be dropped by the dutch railways who lost already lots of money. The Nederlandse Spoorwegen want to drop fully the Fyra carriages constructed by AnsaldoBreda, an italian company with financial difficulties at the moment.
21/01/2013 -Since the introduction of the high-speed trains FYRA between Brussels and Amsterdam on dec 9th 2012, disturbances and problems happened daily. On friday, the control authority of the railways forbad FYRA to run
FYRA is run jointly by belgian and dutch railways. This high speed train was created to replace the Benelux train between Brussels and Amsterdam. But since the introduction on dec 9th, problems have been daily. Delays, non closing doors, technical failures were constantly to report, creating anger of the passengers.
We have also to remember that Fyra doesn’t stop at the same cities as the former Benelux train. Even the capital of the Netherlands Den Haag is not linked anymore to Brussels. Therefor, the city of Den Haag decided some days ago to start negociations with Belgium to run its own train link between Brussels and Den Haag. The belgian city of Mechelen, at which Fyra doesn’t stop joins the action.
The crisis around Fyra escaled when it was decided this friday to give a general interdiction for Fyra-trains to run till resolution of all technical problems. Fyra failures have been discussed at high political level, both in Belgium and the Netherlands and the belgian house of representatives discussed the issue during the question time for the government on january 17th 2012. Some politicians and train users associations urge the railway operators to drop Fyra and to come back to an efficient alternative -like the former Benelux train-.
On sunday january 20th 2013, a new incident occurend when a fyra train making tests blocked a Thalys on the hgh speed way to Amsterdam causing a three hours delay for the Thalys passengers.
The Thalys trains Paris-Brussels-Antwerp-Amsterdam stays a good alternative however.
On this monday morningm the board of the SNCB (belgian railways) gather to cancel the purchase of new fyra trains which have not been delivered yet and maybe to drop Fyra for the future.
A joint committe of both lower houses of belgian and dutch parliament will also meet to discuss the case.
Miguel D. DESNERCK
Brussels Diplomatic 
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